I knew there was a reason I bitched every day for a year and a half until my family left Alabama and moved to Texas:
With the state’s weather forecasters not delivering much-needed rain, Gov. Bob Riley on Thursday turned to a higher power. The governor issued a proclamation calling for a week of prayer for […]

Are these guys working together?
The House Oversight Committee is demanding that Vice President Cheney explain himself. Is his office part of the executive branch? Part of the legislative branch? Or is Cheney suggesting that as far as federal rules are concerned, his office essentially doesn’t exist?
The issue at hand is Cheney’s insistence that his office […]

Um, maybe we should think this through:

Antonio N. Zavaleta, a vice president and professor of anthropology at the University of Texas branch in Brownsville, saw a slight problem in the route of a border fence that federal officials displayed at a community meeting earlier this month.
“Part of our university,” Dr. Zavaleta said, “would be on […]

Governing.com’s 13th Floor reports on tomorrow’s election of a new mayor for Dallas:
Dallas voters will decide on a new mayor tomorrow, with the choices being businessman Tom Leppert, who the local media has deemed “a pleasant, decent, dedicated, hardworking, perfectly OK guy” and city councilman Ed Oakley, who the local media has deemed “a pleasant, […]

Texas Monthly has released its Best and Worst Legislators for 2007 list.
The Best:
Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas
Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas
Byron Cook, R-Corsicana
Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Mesquite
Scott Hochberg, D-Houston
Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham
Jerry Madden, R-Plano
Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan
Sylvester Turner, D-Houston (!!!)
Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands
The Worst:
Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth
Warren Chisum, R-Pampa
Speak Tom Craddick, R-Midland
Lite Gov. David Dewhurst, R
Sen. Tony Fraser, R-Marble […]

Interesting article in today’s The American Prospect online. A new study says the more secular residents there are in a neighborhood, the more conservative their religious neighbors become.
Let’s say you’re a progressive who isn’t religious, and you aren’t afraid to say so. You’ve long since cast off the beliefs your parents held, and you never […]

There seems to be a bit of a fight going on in the Texas political blogosphere regarding whether or not a Hillary nomination would harm down-ballot candidates. While I’m not really too interested in getting into the debate, I personally hope Hillary is not the Democratic candidate for president in 2008. I’m sick of dynasties […]

So I received my 2007 Notice of Appraised Value from the Travis County Appraisal District today. The appraised value of my house more than doubled. The land the house sits on exactly doubled. And, thus, my property taxes more than doubled, with the single highest tax, of course, being for Austin ISD.
But that’s not what […]

Ron Paul is lonely. The Republicans can’t stand his position on the war in Iraq and the Democrats can’t help but mock him as a loon. Does he deserve to be so alone? Yeah, probably Maybe. But it’s still nice to hear a Republican talk sensibly about the war.
Surely one of the highlights of the […]

Ector County Independent School District has hired Liberty Legal Institute, a Plano-based religious-right litigation group, to represent the district in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the district’s use of the controversial, Chuck Norris-endorsed National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools Bible course. (By the way, NCBCPS is the worst […]